The Bottom Line

Issue date: 12/13/06 Section: The AT Wire

It is the end of the semester and the holiday season is approaching. For gamers this means more games and more time to play games! With the release of our next-generation consoles-the Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3-we have the necessary tools to entertain ourselves for hours on end while the winter weather consumes everything outside our homes. Naturally, this is the time of year to be excited about all that spare time you have, but where can it lead?

Video game addiction isn't something people fear, at least not as much as something like drug addiction. Nevertheless, it may shock you to know that there are real detox centers here in the United States that treat video game addicted patients. That's right, these centers are, to quote the subtitle to a recent article from FoxNews.com, "offering in-house treatment for people who can't leave their joysticks alone."

This past summer, the Netherlands had its first video-game addiction center open in Amsterdam. According to the article, this brand new center has already treated 20 video game addicts ranging from thirteen to thirty years old. These detox programs include therapy sessions, wilderness excursions, healthy lifestyle workshops and even medication.

Researchers are blaming these addictions on the destruction of children's social networks-things they are supposed to develop at an early age by communicating with others. They even go so far as to blame the parents because it is the parents who give their children their first exposure to video games. This, of course, is absolutely ridiculous because the same thing could be said about children who are addicted to television. Regardless, parents don't completely escape responsibility because there is more they can do. Getting your son or daughter a Nintendo DS isn't going to turn them into a sun-hating, socially inept failure. On the other hand, not providing other means of entertainment makes you partially responsible. If all a child has is a Nintendo DS then yes, he or she will probably suffer from that. Too much of anything is a bad thing, even too much World of Warcraft.

Another interesting perspective on the issue of game addiction is mentioned by a man named Richard Wood, a professor of psychology with the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in England. Remember when I said it was only a matter of time before people start taking video games seriously? Wood believes that video game addicts aren't necessarily suffering from being addicted to video games, but they are suffering from something else. In other words, playing video games is a symptom of a larger problem.

Continued...

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